Watching the current trends and future direction of Oracle's Applications

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Notes From TFSOTW - Tuesday

A few random notes from OOW08 Tuesday...

It's not nearly as crowded as it was Monday or even Sunday. Feels more like the last day of the show rather than the middle. I'm also noticing the increase of folks with one-day passes. Must be a sign of the economic times...or maybe the weather is so good that folks decided to play a little hookey.

Most of the cool stuff involving Fusion Middleware is happening around the underground Salon area of the Marriott. I managed to hit the Fusion Middleware Lounge. Also sat in on a great presentation entitled "Identity Management for Oracle EBS". Oracle's Stephen Lee and Sid Choudhury did a great job of laying out the future direction and architecture for integrating Identity Management with EBS, especially in regards to moving from Single Sign-On to Oracle Access Manager. The second half of this session was conducted by Agilent Technologies' Mike Cohn, who shared his experiences in leading an implementation of Identity Management with EBS. This was probably the best session I attended all day.

The sessions previewing EBS R12.1 are also pretty exciting. The enhancements in the business processing in 12.1 will provide some motivation for customers who have been holding off on upgrading from 11i. I'm also getting the feeling, just from talking to other people in the EBS sessions, that the uptake for R12 is beginning to ramp up. Seems to me as though the uptake will really take off with the release of 12.1 (which I'm guessing will be sometime in 2009). I suspect we'll an order-of-magnitude increase of customers in production on R12 by the close of 2009.

I love my iPhone for many reasons. Today's reason has to do with avoiding long lines. I hit the Oracle bookstore and actually found several books worth having. When I tried to check out, I lost patience after waiting in non-moving lines for about 10 minutes. Set down the books, picked up my iPhone, and placed an order with Amazon for said books. They'll be waiting for me when I get home this weekend. No fuss, no muss. Like I said, I love my iPhone.

I did get to spend a few minutes at the ACE dinner. This is always one of the most enjoyable events of any Oracle-related conference. It's always great to see old friends as well as meet the new members. Got a nice jacket out of the deal too.

Also managed to swing by the reception for the presentation of the Oracle ACE Awards. Being a judge was a tough job this year. Picking winners was a difficult job.

Did manage to get by the Apple store last night. Now I'm really infected by the halo effect. I suspect I'll be back there Thursday...I'm going home with a new Mac Book Pro.

Also tested the power of Twitter last night. I sent out a tweet letting folks know that I would be hanging in the Marriott hotel lobby-lounge around 9 p.m. with my wife (who flew up for Tuesday and today). A couple of people wandered by at 9. A few more rolled in around 9:20. Folks kept trickling in until 10, when my wife and I broke away for dinner. Came back at 10:30 and the crew was till there (and even grew a bit more). We all finally called it quits around 11:30. Neat. Diggin' the Twitter thing.

I really slacked on the picture thing today...only took a pic in the Fusion Middleware Lounge and another in the Oracle Game Room, plus a few really bad shots of presentation screens from that great Identity Management session. You can see what little I got here. I'll try to do better tomorrow.